Mexico — Beervana Blog Posts

Anecdotally, I gathered that Mexico's craft breweries were were starting basically where Americans did--mostly English-influenced ales, with an emphasis on dark lagers and pales ales. IPAs, outside of the borderlands just south of California, are not really into IPAs, I was told. Fortunately, we can go beyond anecdotes. Tero Moliis is the founder of Maltapp, the main Mexican beer app (something of a cross between BeerAdvocate and Untapped). He looked into his database and pulled these numbers for me:

Jeff AlworthApril 15, 2017Mexico

Cerveza Artesanales de México, Part 1

If you can't call to mind a Mexican craft brewery, don't feel too bad. It's a surprisingly recent phenomenon, dating back a little more than a decade. The first significant craft brewery was Minerva, from Jalisco, launched in 2003. That somewhat overstates things, however. One of the people most able to see the scope of the market is Tero Moliis, who founded an ambitious ratings app called Maltapp. "Two years ago--well, in 2014, let's say, there were fifty or as many as 75 breweries," he told me. "Today there are over 600." Over the past year, they've been opening at a rate of more than one a day.

American StoriesJeff AlworthMarch 24, 2017Mexico, travel

The Baja "Colectivo"

The second—and for me, final—stop was at Baja Brews, a “colectivo” where several breweries are on hand pouring their beers. Imagine a food court, but with breweries. Someone had the brilliant idea of repurposing an old warehouse into Baja Brews, which spills out on the back to a cliff-side view of the Pacific. Live music plays while you sample beers from one of eight (I think) different breweries. It’s a pretty magical place to get a pint of beer.

Jeff AlworthMarch 20, 2017Mexico, Colectivo

En Mexico

I send my dispatch today from under the sunny(ish) skies of Ensenada, Mexico. There's an annual craft beer festival down here that has grown to become one of the more important dates on the annual calendar. Over a hundred breweries will be pouring beer on Saturday and as a lead-up there is a series of talks and lectures from I think largely academic types (I met a researcher last night).